Pollination mode predicts phenological response to climate change in terrestrial orchids: a case study from central Europe

Abstract

Summary1. Herbarium collections contain long-term data for a wide range of taxa and provide unique opportunities to evaluate the importance of life-history components in driving species-specific responses to climate change. In this paper, we analyse the relationships between change in flowering dates and life-history traits within a phylogenetic framework. The study is based on an extensive data set of herbarium specimens of orchids collected in Hungary between 1837 and 2009, supplemented by recent field observations . 2. Of the 39 taxa investigated, 31 (79%) showed apparent advancement in mean flowering time. Among these, advancement was statistically significant in nine taxa. The rest (eight taxa) showed non-significant delays in flowering. Averaging across all taxa, flowering time advanced by 3 days (3.8% of flowering period) during the last 50 years compared with the period before 1960. In taxa showing significant advancement, flowering times advanced by 7.7 days (8.6% of the flowering period). The most extreme advancement was 13.9 days. 3. Multivariate models were used to evaluate ways in which life history may affect phenological responses to climate change. Pollination mode (i.e. deceptive vs. rewarding vs. autogamous), life span (i.e. short-lived vs. long-lived), biogeographical distribution type (i.e. Mediterranean vs. nonMediterranean) and flowering time (i.e. mean date of blooming) emerged as important factors that influence changes in flowering through time. Phylogenetic relatedness did not predict phenological response. The strongest response was observed in orchids that flower relatively early in spring, exhibit an autogamous or deceptive pollination mechanism, have a long life span and possess a Mediterranean centre of distribution. 4. Synthesis. Our investigation demonstrates that the majority of Hungarian orchids have shifted their yearly mean flowering to earlier dates during the past 50 years. Certain life-history traits, but not phylogenetic relatedness, were found to be important in predicting climatic responsiveness in European terrestrial orchids.

Herbarium specimens show contrasting phenological responses to Himalayan climate

“…Although phenological analyses of herbarium data offer unique insights into past responses, they model past responses only, and long-term phenological observation is necessary to fully understand present responses and model those in the future. To complement the herbarium data and test our models, we are directly monitoring Rhododendron phenology on Yulong Mountain, conducting artificial warming experiments, and documenting indigenous peoples' observations of change.This study joins other work from the past decade showing the value of herbarium collections to infer long-term phenology (10,11,43,48,(51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56)(57)(58)(59)(60)(61)(62)(63). These have increasingly shown that not only can the "messy" data from herbarium collections be used to infer phenology, but that these data can reveal the complex effects on phenology of geography (43), pollination (62), morphological traits (48, 52), and, in this study, the contrasting response of warming across different seasons.…”

Az adriai sallangvirág (Himantoglossum adriaticum) magyarországi állományai és lelőhelyeik tájhasználatának története

“…Ez az oka, hogy az 1990-es évek közepéig Magyarországon az egyetlen publikált H. adriaticum lelőhely a Szabó István által 1974-ben megtalált és H. hircinum néven közölt (SZABÓ 1987) Pilikán-Szoroshadi állomány volt (MOLNÁR V. et al 1995). Szisztematikus munkával, az irodalmi és herbáriumi adatok feldolgozásával és a lelőhelyek felkeresésével újabb állományok kerültek elő, melyekről átfogó képet nyújtott SULYOK et al (1998).…”

“…A faj herbáriumi adatai a Magyarországi Orchideák Herbáriumi Adatbázisából (MOLNÁR V. et al 2012) származnak. A fajjal kapcsolatos terepi vizsgálatokat 1992-ben kezdtem a keszthelyi állományban, a többi hazai termőhelyre kiterjedő adatgyűjtések -már segítőkkel -2010-től folynak.…”

Himantoglossum hircinum(Lizard Orchid) reviewed in the light of new morphological and molecular observations

“…1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 Even if the distribution of H. hircinum and its relatives is indeed particularly responsive to climate change, their phenology appears to us to be more robust. In Hungary at least, H. adriaticum -the sister species of H. hircinum -has proven to be less susceptible than most species of Orchidinae to phenological shifts in presumed responses to climate change (Molnár et al, 2012b). In this context, it is interesting to note that the typical altitude of H. hircinum populations appears to increase with decreasing latitude.…”